Azamara Journey - Akaroa

New Zealand isn’t coming out of this cruise very well, so far. The weather has been a huge disappointment to the passengers (and to most Kiwis ashore, it must be said) – some of the Australians are already looking forward to getting to Tasmania and some proper sun at last (which must also be a first, given how most mainland Aussies regard Tassie). Of course, the scenery, when visible through the mist and rain, has not been at its best.

The Captain seems a jolly sort and much more hands-on with the passengers than Tony the Hotel Director, who has been pretty much invisible – to the bitter discontent of the solo travellers, who on past experience expected much more personal attention, and are feeling neglected. Even the Captain, though, has been disgruntled by the weather information he’s been supplied by the NZ authorities. Apparently, the Tauranga storm turned out to be far worse than he was advised, and he would have taken other action had he known what it would be like – and thus, presumably, avoided the flooding of several suites up on Deck 8, which necessitated the replacement of the carpets.

Last night was bumpier than he was expecting, too, with much stronger winds. Being down on Deck 4 here, though, we got a smoother ride than those higher up; and we’re midships too, which helps. Even anchored today in the harbour, the engine was running to keep the ship steady – as a rock, actually, so well done whoever was at the wheel. The tenders gallantly made repeated 5-minute trips to the jetty, periodically disappearing in clouds of spray as they bounced over the whitecaps.

But eventually the weather improved enough to get ashore – though not enough to do the dolphin swim that was originally scheduled which, given the temperature, was a small mercy – and I strode along the waterfront and up Rue Balguérie past its pretty little wooden cottages surrounded by lavender hedges to the Giant’s House with its fabulous garden.

Josie Martin has spent 20 years playing/working hard both landscaping and planting her colourful garden, the framework for which is a huge collection of mosaic paths, walls, figures and fountains. She’s used pebbles, broken china and tile, ornaments, glass and mirror to make patterns and decorate people and animals, steps and seats, sculptures and archways. It’s fun, pretty, amazing, arty, colourful and impressive, and very well worth going to see. 

I got really bored and crabby hanging around on board after lunch, waiting for the weather to improve - but once I got ashore and had a good wander around Josie's garden, getting up close with all her amazing works, my mood improved 100-fold. So thanks for that, JM.

Azamara Journey - Picton 2

I almost got a little bored today, before our departure from Picton at 2pm. It was dull and wet again, and I’d forgotten to bring my book, and, well , Picton. But then I remembered the Edwin Fox, and counted my blessings.

The Edwin Fox is an 1853-built barque that’s the focus of a museum just a few minutes’ walk from the ship, and I spent a contented couple of hours poking around it. The museum is really well done, with a video about the ship’s history and restoration, lots of genuine artefacts, and pleasingly arcane information: I learned about scarf joints, treenails, daggerknees and teredo shipworm. Outside in dry dock was the hull of the Edwin Fox herself, authentically weather-beaten and decayed, but still big and impressive.

She was built in Calcutta from Burmese teak and traversed the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian oceans for 20 years, carrying everything from raspberry vinegar to rapists, before ending up ignominiously as first a freezer and then a coal bunker here in Picton. The vinegar was just one of many cargoes transported – the rapists were transported in the wider sense: convicts sent from England to Australia. Being anal and having plenty of time, here are some details I noted from that one voyage: the youngest was John Lowes, 18, given 6 years for stealing; the oldest William Beresford, 59, given 15 years for forgery; the crimes ranged from sheep stealing (kind of coals to Newcastle for them, ending up in Australia) through pickpocketing, sacrilege, highway robbery, habitual drunkenness (ditto) to carnal knowledge of a girl aged under 10 (11 year-olds presumably fair game). William Burston of Taunton got 14 years for a misdemeanour, which seems a bit harsh.

Their conditions on board were horrendous, crowded into a prison at one end of the main deck, with two cannons trained on it. But the settlers who were the next four cargoes fared not much better: steerage was just awful, families of 6 crammed into one double bunk space with vomit and human and animal faeces dripping into it, gruel to eat, and nothing but cold sea water to wash in – for more than 100 days. Courtesy of Shaw Saville, believe it or not.

So being at a bit of a loose end on Azamara Journey today, sprawled on a queen bed in a comfortable stateroom, with lots of lounges scattered about and more eating options on board than you could shake a stick at, including an Indian cuisine special tonight to look forward to, wasn’t, in comparison, much of a hardship…

Azamara Journey - Picton 1

The Cook Strait crossing normally takes 3½ hours on the ferry – for us last night it was more than eleven. Thankfully, not because we were fighting rough seas, but instead avoiding them, by sailing in the opposite direction almost as far as Palmerston North, to give them time to abate before we headed back south into the Marlborough Sounds. Nice to know Azamara puts passenger comfort ahead of fuel economy.

It was grey and wet this morning, so when our tour driver Don announced that this is NZ’s sunniest province, there was some disbelief – but the acres of neat vineyards backed him up. Our first call was the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre, which ought to have been our sole destination. We only had an hour there and to study the exhibits and appreciate the artistry of the story-telling there really deserves about three times that.

It’s Peter Jackson’s private collection of WWI aircraft and related memorabilia, all displayed with Weta Workshop panache and brilliance, and it really is stunning. Genuine aircraft, rebuilds and models, many of them staged realistically, with stories and masses of rare artefacts in cases… it’s unique and we were so sorry to have to rush past most of it. “Take a photo of that storyboard to read later,” advised the guide heartlessly. And we never got near the WWII hangar. Tch.

All we were taken to do afterwards was have a tasting at the Moa Brewery, and some chocolate at the Makana factory – both pleasant enough, but if we’d been more clued-up we’d have made our own way to Omaka and spent as much time there as we needed.

Picton’s waterfront is ok but it’s a transit town really – small and touristy and not offering much to do. It’s a shame that we have more time here than originally scheduled, because Kaikoura, along the coast, is off the itinerary after November’s big earthquake raised the seabed by two metres. It’s one of an unfortunate trilogy of disappointments this trip: the big storm a few days ago meant the Tauranga (gateway to Rotorua) stop had to be skipped; then no Kaikoura tomorrow; and after that, the recent wildfires around Christchurch damaged a bridge on the TranzAlpine track so that train trip is a no-go too. It’s all just nature, but it’s hard for some of the passengers not to feel victimised. I wonder what Azamara might come up with in compensation?

Azamara Journey - Wellington 2

The rain caught up with us this morning, but fortunately not the wind, so our scuttle along the jetty to board the Azamara Journey, while damp, could have been much more unpleasant. This is Wellington, after all.

The ship is on the small side, as with Silversea, which is what I like in a cruiser. There’s room for 686 passengers aboard, and the philosophy of the company is Destination Immersion, ie “Longer stays, More Overnights, Night touring”. Unlike Silversea, though, it’s casual, there are no formal nights, and it seems bare feet are permissible everywhere except the restaurants. They still have their standards, though: the room guide’s Guest Conduct Policy warns sternly: “Crew members are prohibited from engaging in physical relationships with guests.” Oh, and “Guests must be fully toilet-trained to enter the pool.” Good to know.

So far the ship seems, though recently renovated, a bit less fancy than Silversea, and though everything you’d want is here, not all of it is included, which is disproportionately irritating.

This afternoon we were moored in port. I did yoga, we had drinks at the bar and then dinner at a shared table in the Discoveries restaurant, where the food was very good (not helped though by our being whisked away just before the main course to fill in immigration forms five decks higher at the behest of two uniformed officials - despite our departure from NZ being five days hence). The company was amusing, well-travelled and entertaining (couples from Canada and California) and I warmed to the woman who has learned as the years have passed to travel very light, declaring “Nobody notices what you’re wearing”. Sad, but true; and also convenient.

We set sail for Picton at 9pm and went to bed to be rocked to sleep – and hopefully not turfed out of it while crossing Cook Strait (Captain’s announcement during dinner: “There will be movement.”)

Azamara Journey - Wellington 1

Defying the usual norm, we escaped Auckland’s rain and impending 100+-year storm, and headed south to Wellington’s calm, sunny weather. It was a real pleasure to wander along the city’s waterfront, which is authentic and interesting and varied, unlike Ork’s boring rows of new restaurants and soulless public buildings. Wellington’s waterfront has history, art, poetry and a piano, and is peopled by strollers, runners, cyclists, stall-holders and swimmers. There were paddle-boarders and kayakers, tourists and locals, sea gulls and sparrows, and the sun shone down benevolently on us all.

At Te Papa, there’s a new exhibition, Bugs. It’s designed for kids, but the guy at the desk said that grown-ups spend more time there. With good reason: Weta Workshop has, appropriately, had a big hand in it: it’s obvious, from the exhaustingly meticulous standard of workmanship. I mean, a big bee at the entrance, maybe 40cm long, took 180 hours to make, of which 4 days were spent attaching 2500 individual hog’s hairs to its body. Inside the exhibition were a huge praying mantis, swarms of dragonflies and bees, and another sort of fly attacking a cockroach, all done with mind-blowing detail, fancy lighting and lots of accessible information – but, thankfully, not too much of it (I’ve just been writing an opinion piece about museum guilt, so it was on my mind).

We were back there again that evening, for the Az-Amazing evening that is a feature of each cruise with this company, Azamara. We’re boarding the ship, the Journey, tomorrow for an 11-day tour of the South Island and then across the Tasman (two days at sea!) to Hobart and finally Sydney. The cruise began in Auckland and called at the Bay of Islands and Napier, but my famil begins here at Wellington.

The entertainment was, naturally, Maori, introduced by “internationally-famous actor” Temuera Morrison, who gave the audience of passengers (mostly American, then Aussie, British, Canadian, German, Chilean and Belgian, with just a few Kiwis and four Japanese) a foreigner-friendly version of the language and culture. Then he let loose the concert party with their action songs and poi dances - a good half of which I remembered from my Maori Club days back in the late ‘60s - before the unimaginatively-named Modern Maori Quartet came on stage to give a friendly and professional set of more universally-recognisable songs. It was good, and the audience gave them a standing ovation at the end, which was pleasing.

And then we walked back to our hotel along the waterfront again, the lights twinkling on the glassy water, artworks spotlit, restaurants humming, doors pushed back and tables outside, people strolling, music in the air… it reminded me of Cape Town. And also, coincidentally, of Hobart. I’m looking forward to tomorrow, when I’ll start the journey that will take me there.

Biting the hand?

I felt a bit got at today. Arriving in the city for an event, the ferry pulled in near the Azamara Journey, a small-ship cruiser moored at Princes Wharf. It’s recently refurbished, on its first visit to NZ, and later this week I’ll be travelling on it from Wellington to Sydney, via the South Island. So, naturally, I took a photo.

There was a shriek behind me as I framed it. “You are THE LAST PERSON I would expect to see photographing a CRUISE SHIP! HORRENDOUS! I would HATE to go on one of those, couldn’t imagine anything WORSE! GHASTLY!!!”

It was a travel colleague, older than me, but still with yachting in her blood and so scathing about how you’re nowhere near the water on a cruise ship and might as well not be at sea at all, it’s just a hotel. And on, and on. Her diatribe had a familiar ring, because it’s almost exactly what I say myself about the big ships, with their thousands of passengers and golf courses and gondolas and climbing walls and suchlike. I felt somewhat nonplussed to be on the receiving end of such disparagement, when I’d actually been quite looking forward to the cruise.

And afterwards, at the event, which was a presentation by various travel people, the final speaker was less emphatic than Geraldine but equally heartfelt in his criticisms of people who accept complimentary famils - “for example, cruises” - in order to write about them. He maintained that it could only ever be advertorial in essence, however independent the writer claimed to be. 

Ever get that feeling that there’s a huge arrow, pointing downwards, hanging right over your head?

People often ask about this aspect of travel writing, and my usual reply is that I only accept trips that appeal to me, and since they’re arranged by professionals who want me to have a good time, it’s very rare that I have anything to complain about. And that’s true. Occasionally things go wrong, and that’s usually fun for the story – but doing a puff piece about somewhere I hated? Doesn’t happen.

Nothing’s ever 100% perfect, though. Should I make more of a feature of the bits I don’t like? But you can’t fit everything into 800 or 1000 words, and there is always a bit of discreet veil-drawing – as much because of places trying to please all the people, as anything else. One woman’s heavenly spa treatment is another’s personal-space-invading hell, after all.

But I will keep it in mind, when I’m on the Journey. I’ll ask the other passengers what they think; and I’ll try not to worry about hurting the feelings of the eager PR person who is arranging the trip. I shall aim (as, to be fair, I always have) for journalistic integrity. If there are dust bunnies under the bed, they will have their moment of fame.

USA lite

Another photo (sadly not mine - uplifted from @allapetropavlovska on Instagram - go and see her others, they're amazing too) to add to the file headed 'How does Lava Ocean Tours get away with this stuff?' It's making me think that what I considered an exciting boat ride back in December was so, so tame compared with what's happening now on Hawaii's Big Island. Remember, folks, the Kilauea Volcano has been in continuous eruption since 1983, and still it's not empty! Captain Shane must be loving it, and is clearly still pushing the boundaries to give his customers the cruise of their lives. I hope he continues to flirt unscathed with the danger...

Hawaii is a pretty hot destination right now, from this end at least, with temptingly low airfares thanks to Hawaiian Airlines' new service out of Auckland, and the appeal of getting a taste of the States without having to venture into Trump territory (Hawaii is a blue state). All the negative news from the Lower 48 must be making life a bit difficult for the Brand USA people who have been so busy here over the last few years. Anti-immigration doesn't sit well with tourism, on top of all the upset and aggro that's going on, making the States feel like a slightly dodgy destination these days.

Mind you, I think it's always had a bit of an edge. They may speak English (...) there, and lots of the cities, the countryside too, and many of its ways of life are already familiar from TV and movies, but it's still a foreign country that despite the general friendliness of its natives can make visitors feel a little anxious in ways that, say, France or Hong Kong or even India don't. For me it comes down to the authoritarianism of uniformed people, starting of course with airport customs and security, and the guns everywhere. Even the signs are so bossy! Telling you what to do and, more sternly, what not to do, wherever you go - with no concession to common sense or even basic self-preservation instincts. They seem to assume that everyone is either irremediably thick, or ill-intentioned. Neither is reassuring.

Captain Shane seemed to be just like that, in his introduction, which verged on abrasive - but then he went on to break goodness knows how many rules on his cruise, to give us all the best possible thrill for our money. Or maybe that's just how he gets his kicks, and we customers are the means of enabling that... Anyway, good luck to him. Lava Ocean Tours, people.